Chapter Three
It couldn’t be him. This Logan of Lochaber could not possibly be the same man from her father’s dungeon.
That man had been pitiful, covered in blood, dirt and bruises.
This man had glossy, chestnut hair and dark, sharp eyes like a hawk, taking in every detail around him.
When he’d taken in Elspeth, he scowled, dipping his brows over his eyes.
Did he remember her? But his unbruised eye, back then, had been on her for just a moment before he’d fallen unconscious again.
Aye, he appeared different with his hair clean and his face free of bruises, and six years older. But it was him.
Elspeth watched him walk away, most hated of hated men. When she finally couldn’t stand it another instant, she sprang from her saddle and bent to pick up a rock to throw it at his head.
Her escort, Ewen MacDonald, leaped at her and knocked her to the floor.
“Ye willna try to hurt him, lass. Do ye understand me? Every man and woman in Lochaber will be yer enemy.”
He didn’t lift himself off her until she nodded her agreement not to try to hurt his cousin.
She wasn’t being dishonest after all. She would not hurt him.
She fully intended to kill him, even if she died in the process.
She finally was given an opportunity to exact revenge for her parents’ and her brothers’ deaths.
She would not let it pass. She could not.
“If ye wish to know the truth,” she said through her teeth. “I’m going to make certain I’m the cause of his last breath.”
The Highlander’s eyes grew darker on her.
He’d been nice enough while he led her closer and closer to her enemy.
He’d even let her ride when she began to limp on her blistered feet.
But they weren’t friends. She hadn’t had a friend in six years.
That was another thing the Camerons took from her.
After she took care of the one who carried the blood of her family and friends on his shoulders, she would take care of his murderous cousins.
“Ewen.”
The sound of his name on Logan Cameron’s lips stilled him atop her.
“Do ye intend to remain there until the sun sets?”
Why had he returned, Elspeth wondered? Hadn’t he just stormed off? Why did his tone sound less teasing and more dreadful?
Her escort leaped to his feet and wiped off his plaid.
Logan the Royalist stepped around him and held his hand out to Elspeth to help her to her feet.
She refused his aid and stood up on her own to glare at Ewen, and then at his cousin. “Ye will release me. I dinna belong to either one of ye!”
“On the contrary, lass,” interjected the second man to arrive, “the king has declared that Dunley Keep, including whatever or whoever belongs to it, is now Logan’s. Therefore, ye belong to him. He is well within his right to give ye away.”
“Steafan,” Logan said and motioned to him to stop speaking.
Steafan obeyed. Elspeth stared at him, remembering his name and adding it to those she had to kill.
“Where will ye go?”
She blinked at Logan of Lochaber. “Pardon?”
“Where will ye go?” he repeated, then relaxed his stance and waited for her to answer.
“That isna yer concern,” she told him.
The dark sable of his eyes shone on her like embers in the ashes. She held her gaze steady, but it wasn’t an easy feat. Just when she was about to break his hold and look away, he spoke. “I willna have my property harmed by wanderin’ aboot aimlessly with nae one to protect her.”
“I am not yer property!” she snapped at him and bent for another rock. This time Logan of Lochaber held up his right palm to stop the other brawny brute from leaping at her. Then, with the same hand, he caught her by the wrist when she was about to fling the rock.
He took a step closer to her, still holding her wrist up between their faces. “This will cease, Miss Woodburn. If ye keep it up, I will tie ye to a tree and leave ye fer the animals to eat.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw Ewen look away from her, afraid to defend her. And why should he? He was kin to the oaf standing in front of her, holding her prisoner shackled to his fingers. None of these Catholics would do anything to help her. Just as she would do nothing to ever help them.
“Follow him.” He traded her off to Ewen, letting go of her wrist when the other Highlander took hold of it.
She didn’t speak to Ewen as he tugged her away but cursed him and his friend under her breath.
She didn’t want to live among the men who killed her family.
She wouldn’t! How would she do it? She couldn’t stab or shoot them here on their land or she would never escape it.
She considered what she knew best, plants, roots, flowers.
She would poison them. Starting with Logan Cameron.
Och, he infuriated her. How dare he ridicule and threaten her after what he’d caused?
She would poison him slowly so she could enjoy her revenge.
With that thought giving her some comfort from her aching heart and blinding hatred, she looked around, studying the terrain.
The high, ragged mountain range spreading out before her blocked an entire direction and left only two ways out of the glen.
Both required a horse if she meant to move uphill swiftly.
Escape would be a challenge for certain.
She spread her hardened gaze over the two houses just beyond the shadows of Ben Nevis. Was that where the Camerons lived? She didn’t ask. She’d find out soon enough.
“Ye will remain here until Logan makes a final decision aboot ye,” Ewen told her in a softer tone. One he’d used with her on their journey here.
“Take me away from here,” she uncharacteristically pleaded.
That wasn’t altogether true. It wasn’t completely uncharacteristic of her. Once, when she was first captured, she’d pleaded often. But then the last shred of herself was torn away when she was bought by James Frasier of Ayr, her previous lord.
She’d never dreamed of killing any of her prior masters, no matter how poorly they had treated her. She’d added their wrongdoing to the Camerons’ souls—and hated them only.
“I willna go against what Logan wishes, lass. I will only take ye from here if he tells me again to do it.”
Coward! She wanted to scream at him. She hated Ewen, but she pretended to smile and be forgiving around him, especially since he fed her and kept wild animals away from eating them where they slept in the woods.
They had spoken of things like what happened to her after his clan had killed her family, but he wouldn’t tell her which of the Camerons or MacDonalds had killed her family…
. claiming none of them had done it, and she did understand, did she not, that when he did kill, he was following orders from the king to kill Protestants after they had killed so many Royalists?
Of course she understood! That was one reason why she decided to kill him first and had already gathered plants to concoct something deadly. That, and he’d killed Gilchrist. But after meeting the infamous Logan Cameron, Ewen was pushed back to being the second person she wanted to kill.
“I dinna care what he decides,” she let him know with a shaky voice. Aye, she knew these Highlanders could kill her and probably would if she defied their leader—and Logan definitely made her think of a leader.
“I will decide my fate,” she warned. “I will end his life if I remain here. And then how will ye feel fer not taking me from his presence?”
He stared at her, looking as if there were a dozen things he wanted to say, but refrained.
“Are ye so eager to die, then?”
She nodded. “If ’tis the only way out of here.”
He said something indistinguishable and continued on.
He led her to the thick wood and iron door of the smaller house, the house in which Logan had entered. She hesitated, not wanting to go inside, but Ewen pulled her.
The interior was surprisingly warm and spacious, though unpleasantly untidy. She wondered where all the servants were. The cold stone walls were softened by small tapestries and furs. The smell of peat smoke and leather filled her nostrils.
“There is good food in the Main Hall,” a Highlander with a halo of golden curls told them merrily.
Elspeth remembered him from that fateful day in the dungeon. He still carried a pistol, but now it was tucked under a belt at his waist.
“Logan cooked it,” the innocent looking Highlander let them know.
Logan cooked it? Elspeth thought curiously. “Is there no cook here?” she finally asked.
“Aye, Logan is the cook,” the Highlander said with a chuckle.
“Jamie,” Ewen interrupted, leading her to the Main Hall. “How has he been?”
“The same,” Jamie let him know.
The Main Hall was large with a central hearth and a long table with benches on either side and a carved chair at the head.
Fruit and vegetables hung from the rafters, and brown bags of grain and other fruit sat propped against the walls.
There were a variety of marked herbs in jars on another long, narrow table and a large pot dangling over embers above the hearth.
She looked over everything while listening to the two Highlanders discussing their cousin.
“He stays here mostly. Me and Steafan come every day, but I think he prefers bein’ alone.”
Ewen said nothing. Elspeth was tempted to look over her shoulder at him.
From the time she spent traveling here with him, it was clear to her that Ewen adored the clan chief Cameron’s son.
She had already guessed it when she’d watched him rush into the dungeon six years ago, take one look at his cousin, then kill Gilchrist.
She had no idea what it was about Logan Cameron that was so lovable. He was arrogant and angry, when he had nothing to be arrogant or angry about.
“If he wants to be alone,” Ewen said, “then let him be alone. What the hell are ye both doin’ here so early anyway?”
Jamie frowned. “He told us to be here at sunup fer breakfast!”
“So,” Ewen immediately concluded, “Ye begged him to feed ye.”